In the pharmaceutical industry, "outserts" must be packaged with prescription drugs for use by dispensing pharmacists. Such outserts contain information about the chemical composition of the drugs together with dosage and administration information and warnings about possible side effects in connection with their use. Inclusion of appropriate outserts, in accordance with the regulations of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is thus an important aspect of the packaging and distribution of pharmaceuticals.
Outserts can be packaged with the pharmaceuticals in two basic manners; either in individual cartons together with the containers of pharmaceuticals, or by application directly to the containers. The use of cartons, of course, involves additional cost and the machinery for placing outserts in such cartons on a production line basis can be expensive, complicated and difficult to maintain. Oftentimes, however, containers of pharmaceuticals are not packaged in individual cartons but are shipped with multiple containers to a case with an outsert applied directly to each container. When outserts are applied to the outsides of the containers, careful attention must therefore be given to effecting a reliable connection which will withstand the rigors of handling and yet permit detachment by the pharmacist without destroying the outsert.
Various machinery has been available heretofore for applying outserts directly to containers by means of hot melt adhesives, double-face tape and heat shrink material techniques; however, the devices of the prior art have tended to be unduly complicated and expensive and have not been adapted for convenient changeover to accomodate various sizes and types of outserts and containers. Outserts are typically formed of paper while the containers are usually constructed from plastic or glass, and it will be appreciated that outserts and containers come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. In addition, manufacturing variations in the outserts and containers must be taken into account. Hot melt adhesive is generally less expensive than double-face tape and heat shrink materials, but requires proper application of sufficient adhesive to the outserts as well as proper contact between the outserts and the containers in order to achieve reliable adhesive connection. Some of the prior machinery is relatively speedy but unreliable due to either inadequate adhesive and/or improper application of adhesive to the outserts, or inadequate contact and thus weak connection between the outserts and containers.
A need has thus arisen for an improved outsert applicator apparatus by which outserts can be reliably applied to multiple containers simultaneously and which is adapted to facilitate rapid changeover to compensate for outserts and containers of different sizes.